


From Debris

by idyll



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-08
Updated: 2006-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:36:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which laundry is dealt with, <i>Pi</i> is harped on, Rodney panics, and John has the outline of an analogy he'll never quite finish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Debris

John wasn't ever a slob, not even when he was a teenager. His father was a military man who demanded order and while John sometimes rebelled against that, he always knew he wanted to fly. It seemed, well, pointless to fight something he was eventually going to let someone else force upon him.

It's not like he's a neatfreak, or anything, but he's not the kind of guy to let leftover pizza become a biohazard, or dirty socks germinate under his bed. At least, he never _used_ to be the kind of guy to do the latter.

"It's the most ridiculous thing I've seen!" Rodney insists vehemently.

"Personally, I think it's more ridiculous that you're still harping on it," John replies and picks up a sock from the floor. It's so stiff it actually _cracks_ between his fingers, which is a little bit fascinating and he bends it in a few different places curiously before Rodney snatches it out of his hand and tosses it in the large pile of whites in the center of the living room.

"I hardly think that due contemplation and discussion of the subject can be considered harping. It's stupid and--huh, is that fungus?" Rodney holds up a towel and John stares at the textured and discolored spots on it.

"I have no idea but toss it to be on the safe side."

Rodney shoves the towel into the overflowing garbage bag next to him and continues what he was saying before the threat of contagion came into the picture (and this is why they wear latex gloves when they sort the laundry, though why the gloves are purple is something John refuses to ask).

"It's stupid! He gets all this insight and knowledge and just gives it up because he goes a little crazy. Why? Why would someone do that after spending years trying to find pure mathematical enlightenment?"

Right then John vows to a) destroy the _Pi_ DVD before they head back to Atlantis, and b) get back at Zelenka, who had to know that the movie would make Rodney froth at the mouth but gave it to him anyway.

"Oh, see, I thought you meant the part where he took a drill to his head was stupid because, you know, _drill_. To the _head_."

Rodney rolls his eyes, lifts his chin, and waves one purple hand. "The inherent stupidity in doing that is obvious and I didn't think it needed to be stated. Besides, it all relates back to my point, which is: for the love of God, why?"

"You're a scientist; you don't believe in God," John reminds him because the last _Pi_ induced rant of Rodney's was about God versus pure and true mathematical understanding of all known things.

Personally, John's of the opinion that Rodney does believe in God, or, at the very least, he doesn't exactly disbelieve. But it took five days and one semi-public blow job to get Rodney to just shut the hell up about it, already, and John isn't in the mood for it to start again so he leaves his statement as it stands.

John kicks one of his black t-shirts towards the pile of black clothing in front of Rodney's sofa. In the process he unearths something crumpled and unidentifiable. "What the hell is that?"

"Hm?" Rodney crawls over the pile of whites and pokes at the crumpled ball. "I think those are the boxers we used to clean up the marinara sauce that spilled last week." He pokes some more, nudges the ball to the left, and nods. "Yeah. Should we bother--"

"Throw them out."

"Anyway, if I were to discover the secret of the universe, I wouldn't decide to just give it all up, even if there was a way to do it safely and that didn't involve taking a drill to my head." He holds up another t-shirt and waves it at John accusingly. "Oh my god, how many of these do you own? And do you wear three of them a day? There's got to be a hundred of them!"

Whenever they come back to earth on leave laundry is always this huge dramatic process and--also? Sometimes Rodney talks out of his ass. "You are so full of shit," John says and snatches the t-shirt out of Rodney's hands. "You'd totally want to get rid of it, and you'd reach for a drill if it was your only option."

Rodney looks vaguely affronted. "I'll have you know that--"

"Don't even argue. The second you realized you wouldn't be sane enough to put any of that knowledge to practical use, you'd--" John points at his head and makes a noise like a really loud drill, which makes Rodney shudder.

"I will pay you in sexual favors to never make that noise again," Rodney says faintly, then shakes it off and ties up the garbage bag of unsalvageable clothing. "And practical application is overrated when you're talking about the secrets of the universe."

"No articles or papers means no Nobel Prize." John kicks the last five bits of laundry in the general direction of their appropriate piles and smirks at the horrified look on Rodney's face. Then, just because it's fun, he points at his head and makes another buzzing drill sound.

"Wow, you've made me hate you. Good job. You get a gold star."

"You can stick the star right here," John says and points at a spot on his head, accompanying drill buzzing included at no extra cost. Rodney glares at him, looking slightly green around the gills, and John grins and lowers his hand.

"Now that you're done giving me nightmare fodder," Rodney says, put upon and kept down by the man, "we can figure out who's going to actually do the laundry." He digs into his pocket and pulls out a coin. "I call tales."

"Hey, wait, why do you get to toss it?"

"Because I don't trust you to not rig the toss. You cheat at rock-paper-scissors, John. _Rock-paper-scissors_." He looks insulted, yet also impressed against his will. "It's disgusting."

John stares at him. "You can't be serious. It's not possible to cheat at rock-paper-scissors. That's why you picked it."

"Yes, well, since then I've had to re-evaluate my position on the subject. I used to think it was impossible but now I know that it's only highly improbable."

"Okay," John drawls and does his best to make that one word convey: you're a sore loser and you're grasping at straws, you big laundry-hating baby. "But maybe I don't trust you to do the toss, either. What then?"

Rodney looks at him like he's an idiot. "It doesn't matter if you trust me or not," he says, so slowly and carefully that John wants to hit him and yell that he's not a demented child. "I don't have the hand-eye coordination it would require to rig a coin toss." He holds up the coin and gives John an expectant look. "Ready?"

"Fine, yeah. Toss the damn thing already before one of us has to haul out Hazmat gear to wash the clothes."

John waits until Rodney is just about to flip the coin before buzzing out another drill noise, and the coin goes flying across the room into the pile of colored clothes. The look on Rodney's face has John laughing so hard that he chokes for air and has to sit down on the sofa behind him because he can't hold himself up.

Rodney turns a truly vibrant shade of red and hisses, "No assisted orgasms for the _rest of your life_!" Then he kicks a pile of crunchy socks in John's direction and storms out of the room.

When John goes into the kitchen a few minutes later, Rodney is standing in front of the open refrigerator, _teal_ colored latex gloves on his hands (and John also won't ask why there seems to be a color-coded system for the gloves, just, no), and a half-full garbage bag at his feet.

"You are not amusing," Rodney announces and tosses a carton of milk into the bag. "At all."

"To other, cooler, people I am."

Rodney pivots on his heel and glares at him, and John smiles and wriggles his brows in that way he knows Rodney hates.

"You should know that, thanks to that stunt, you're stuck with laundry duty forever."

"Gee, solo orgasms and crunchy socks for eternity. That seems a little harsh." John reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a folded square of paper. "I mean," he goes on as he starts unfolding the page, "it's not like you don't do things that horrify me on a daily basis. You _drool_ on my pillow in your sleep, and I see more of your food when it's in your mouth than when it's on your plate."

"Yes, that and a dozen other things are true," Rodney says dismissively. "But, if you recall, when you asked me to stop cracking my toes because it grossed you out, I _stopped cracking my toes_."

"Okay, fine, you're a better man than I am," John drawls. "But I'm the one with the magic number." He triumphantly holds up the laundry service flyer.

"Oh, please. We both know there isn't a launderer in this half of the state that will deal with our fetid wash again."

John points at the colored banner on the page that reads, _Grand Opening!_ and Rodney grabs it with a teal-gloved hand that's coated in decomposing vegetables from the crisper.

The reason there's anything at all in the crisper is that every once in a while Rodney becomes frantically and hysterically convinced he's going to die from his poor habits and has to tear out of the apartment immediately to buy a metric ton of healthy food ("I am mere hours away from dying from the cumulative effect of several decades worth of nutritional deficiency, John! Oh, god, I'm hyperventilating; do we have any paper bags?")

John would mostly be amused by this except that it tends to always happen at three in the morning, when the only thing open is the Super Wal-Mart. Since Rodney is generally huffing into a brown bag before he gets to the front door, John has to drive him there, at which time he is reminded that Hell is not a Wraith hive ship, but the Super Wal-Mart in the middle of the night.

Also, Rodney's panic always fades before he actually _eats_ any of the food he buys and there's only so much arugula John can bring himself to ingest.

"So can we negotiate the return of assisted orgasms?" John asks Rodney, who is looking at the flyer with disturbingly dewy eyes.

"Hm, oh, yes. But you're carting the laundry over there."

*

John picks up the laundry from a severely traumatized launderer the next day, and while he and Rodney are sorting the neatly folded clothes into piles of _mine_, _yours_, _where the hell did that come from_, and _no, really, whose is that_, John says, "I think there was a flash."

"A flash?"

"Like from a camera. When I was getting the laundry."

Rodney snatches a pair of jeans from John's hands and puts them on "his" side of the bed. "How is it that I'm the paranoid genius in this relationship but you're the one who thinks we're photographed by, and then summarily banned from, every establishment we patronize?"

It sounds stupid when it's put like that but John knows for a fact that they are no longer welcome at Ben &amp; Jerry's, The Beat Bar, and three different Starbucks in Colorado Springs on account of Rodney having no patience for idiots, morons, and baristas who don't know their ventis from their grandes.

"It's not paranoia if it's true," John drawls. "Besides, the natives run us off most of the planets we visit. I figure being banned from places of business is the comparable earth-side experience."

"Huh," Rodney says, pausing mid-motion and frowning. "You know, you might be on to something. I swear the hostess at TGIFridays was giving us a shifty look while she talked on that red phone at the hostess stand."

Actually, she was attempting to flirt with Rodney from across the room while she fielded incoming phone orders. "Completely shifty," John agrees shamelessly. "Hey, is that a bra?"

"So it would seem." Rodney tosses it on top of the "'no, really, whose is that" pile. "See, this is why I worry about sending our laundry out."

"Lingerie?"

"Not lingerie specifically, no, but the idea that if we ended up with this, what of ours did someone else end up with?" His eyes widen and he starts tearing through the laundry bags. "Quick, look through that bag by your feet and make sure my _I'm With Genius_ t-shirt is here."

John sighs and digs out the damn shirt from the bottom of the "where the hell did that come from" pile on the floor. "I swear that thing has a charmed existence," John sighs while Rodney clutches it to his chest.

John's been trying to get rid of it since the first time he saw it a year ago. But there are unwritten and unspoken rules to throwing away articles of your significant other's clothing, and one of them is that if he asks about said article after you have secreted it away for disposal, but before you have disposed of it, then it must be returned.

Speaking of which...

"Rodney?" John drawls suspiciously after poking through the piles on the bed and the bag at his feet. "Where are my Air Force Academy sweats?"

"Oh, for the love of pure mathematical enlightenment!" Rodney exclaims and tosses his hands in the air. "How can it be this hard to get rid of a pair of pants that have been reduced to a band of tired elastic, about five straps of material, and three dubious stains?"

"Hand them over," John replies, refusing to be drawn into a distracting defense of his beloved pants that could result in him forgetting to actually get the pants back in his possession.

"Fine," Rodney huffs and lifts up a corner of the mattress and retrieves the pants. "Here, have them. But I hope that you get called to emergency action in the middle of the night while wearing them, because I think having all of Atlantis see half your ass, three quarters of your left leg, and eight tenths of your right calf might possibly be humiliating enough for you to put those to rest."

"Eight tenths?" John repeats blandly.

"Less mocking and more sorting," Rodney demands. "We've once again left everything to the last possible minute and we only have seven hours to finish this, pack, have copious amounts of loud and boisterous sex, and get enough sleep to be coherent during all of the tedious pre-return briefings we'll be subjected to tomorrow."

John also needs to find a minute to do something with the _Pi_ DVD he stole out of the case last night while Rodney was drooling on his pillow. There's a gap between the counter and the wall on the far side of the kitchen, and he thinks he'll be able to cram it in there so well that it'll never come out, even if Rodney should one day in the future actually notice it there.

"Also," Rodney says a few minutes later, when John has finally gotten around to working through the bag at his feet, "you're only partially correct."

John tosses a pile of cushioned arch-support socks on Rodney's side of the bed and arches a brow.

Rodney flaps a hand in the air. "While I would, indeed, choose sanity and my current state of genius over insanity and pure mathematical enlightenment, I wouldn't do so right away."

John rolls his eyes. "Why am I not surprised that you would willingly spend a bunch of time completely insane?"

"But in that time--I'm thinking about a year, maybe eighteen months--I could at the very least record some of my astounding revelations, which would just be waiting for me when I--"

"Take a drill to your head," John interjects cheerfully and gets a quick drill buzz sound in before Rodney tosses a belt at his head. Buckle first. "_Ow_!"

"When I am put back to my former self," Rodney finishes with satisfaction.

"In the movie he was average at the end," John points out. "Remember, the kid comes up to him and--"

"Yes, yes, I know, I watched it with you, and I _do_ have better recall than a goldfish, thank you. However, my corrective plan includes a safe medical procedure devised and performed by the Asgard, rather than the taking of a drill to my head in the bathroom."

"You know, some people do that to get high."

"Some people are idiots and drill holes in their skull in the delusional belief that it is the ultimate high, yes. That man--" And he says it with such disgusted vehemence that it comes out as a curt hiss, a sound that, until now, John wouldn't have thought possible for a person to pull off. "--drilled into his _brain_\--and, oh, I'm getting nauseous."

"Settle down and sort clothes."

"No, really, I think I might vomit. Do you know that there is an exorbitantly high probability that I'll be irrevocably brain damaged while on Atlantis?"

Rodney's face gets all pasty, and his breathing gets erratic and shallow, and John tries to remember if they have any paper bags left. They always start out their leave with a large supply but Rodney goes through them like crazy because he lets every little thing get him worked into a tizzy ("I retain thirty-five percent more of my calm on Atlantis if I let it have its way with me here. Do you want to see the figures? Because I've done the math." "...no, that's alright.")

"I have nightmares about it," Rodney rasps, his arms flailing about. "Terrible, horrible nightmares about my head getting crushed in, and my brain matter being turned into so much soggy mush."

"We'll get you a helmet," John says serenely.

Five minutes later Rodney takes his face out of the mouth of a paper bag and glares at John. "I hate you so very, very much."

John rubs circles on Rodney's back. "Buck up, little camper."

*

John has this theory. Actually, it's more of theory of an analogy, and it's about the parallels between their laundry and the mental and emotional process they go through when they take leave on earth.

It starts with the fact that when they get here all of their clothes are wrinkled and a little stale smelling because they don't get much chance to wear civvies on Atlantis.

Somewhere in the middle there's the part where they sort through all the dirty laundry, get rid of stuff that can't be salvaged, and clean what can be.

It ends with them packing up a lesser amount of musky smelling, neatly folded clothes that they bring back with them to get all wrinkled and stale smelling again.

John never gets around to fleshing it out entirely because invariably he comes to the part where they hold onto things that are falling apart at the seams, or incredibly obnoxious and ugly, because those things are familiar and comforting and have sentimental value.

It's a little too touchy-feely for John's tastes and generally that's the point at which he'll tackle Rodney onto the piles of clean, folded clothes for a round of loud and boisterous sex (and that's why their clothes are always musky smelling when they go back to Atlantis, despite the fact that they're always freshly washed).

Besides, given the start and end points he's fixed, he thinks it would probably be a little depressing on the whole if he ever did work it out entirely. He'd rather just let it be what it is.

*  
.End


End file.
